When hakeem Abdul Hameed started Rabea Girls Public School in 1973 in the walled city of Old Delhi, there were plenty of nay-sayers. They believed a public school for girls won’t work in Old Delhi as most parents were too conservative. The hakeem sahib, however, believed it was essential to bring quality education to the deserving and the needy. The school, named after his mother, took off in a big way, and hundreds of parents who considered Connaught Place, located merely three kilometres from their house, too far, were happy to send their kids to Rabea a few brisk steps from home. The school changed the outlook towards girls’ education in Shahjahanabad, much like the Anglo-Arabic Senior Secondary School had done nearly three centuries ago for boys.
Anglo-Arabic had accommodated generations of boys of the walled city, giving them quality education besides the best of co-curricular and extra-curricular activities. It counts leading doctors, engineers, social activists, academics and sportsmen among its alumni. Yet the school, located in the historic precincts of Ghaziuddin’s tomb, remained confined to mothballs of history. That is until Jamia Millia Islamia’s academic Azra Razzack joined hands with veteran advocate M. Atyab Siddiqui to pen The School at Ajmeri Gate: Delhi’s Educational Legacy an account of the school so insightful as to be consistently engaging, so revealing like the opening pages of a history book.
Book cover of Anglo-Arabic School at Ajmeri Gate | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
The book opens like a family album with black and white photographs of yesteryears. Veteran educationist Krishna Kumar, who also released the book in New Delhi recently, said, “The Anglo-Arabic School is a modest heritage institution. How it faced life after Partition comprises a subject of soul-stirring research. Many of the voices we hear are laced with nostalgia for life as it was before the catastrophe. These are voices of teachers and parents, and students who later became social and political leaders.”
Among them is Mohammed Qasim who first studied here, and then taught for more than 25 years before going on to be a member of the governing body. Says Qasim, “I taught at Jamia between 1984 and 1988. After that, it was only Anglo-Arabic. The first time I entered its compound as a teacher I went around the school and soaked in all the sights. It is my alma mater, I am what I am because of Anglo-Arabic. My best achievement is when my former students say they could crack competitive exams without coaching thanks to the teachers at the school.”
NEW DELHI, 09/11/2022: A view of Anglo Arabic School, one of the oldest educational institution at Ajmeri Gate in Delhi, on Wednesday, November 9, 2022. Photo: SHIV KUMAR PUSHPAKAR / The Hindu | Photo Credit: SHIV KUMAR PUSHPAKAR
Situated against the backdrop of a Mughal-style mosque with a long inner courtyard, the school has an indelible association with madrasa Ghaziuddin, who was a noble in Aurangzeb’s time, and its successor, the famed Delhi College.
As the authors say, “The attachment of the community and old boys to this institution is akin to Bahadur Shah Zafar’s yearning for ‘do gaz zameen’.” Incidentally, both Razzack and Siddiqui were members of the governing body as well as the Delhi Education Society under whose aegis the school functions. A minority institution, immersed in Muslim culture, the school has brought tens of thousands into the mainstream of education. It has done more for nurturing Urdu than probably Delhi’s all public schools combined.
NEW DELHI, 09/11/2022: (To go with Jigees's story): Azra Razzack and Atyab Siddiqui with "The School At Ajmeri Gate", the book they authored on the Anglo Arabic School, one of the oldest educational institution in Delhi, at Nizamuddin in New Delhi on Tuesday, November 8, 2022. Photo: SHIV KUMAR PUSHPAKAR / The Hindu | Photo Credit: SHIV KUMAR PUSHPAKAR
Then it added another feather to its cap. Some 40 years after Rabea started less than a kilometre away, Anglo-Arabic started welcoming girl students. As Razzack and Siddiqui write in the book, and repeated with pride at the book launch, “Winds of change swept through the Anglo-Arabic School in2012. A new chapter was being written in the annals of the school’s history. The Anglo Arabic School, which had hitherto been a male bastion, had undergone a transformation. It had now become a co-educational institution. The girls had arrived.”
It was, inevitably, a fractious affair. While the elders had their apprehension, the boys were all for it! The school’s performance in Class X and XII Board exams has improved since! A lot more needs to be done at the school where the focus is often not on scoring a high percentage but obtaining a high pass percentage.
